


In Life, the Monsters Win

by lackluster_lexicon



Series: AvenMsn Drabbles [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackluster_lexicon/pseuds/lackluster_lexicon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He told himself it would be like getting x-rays at the dentist’s: take a seat, stare straight ahead, relax, don’t move. A few orbits of the mechanical arm dousing you with radiation, and bam! All done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Life, the Monsters Win

**Author's Note:**

> Another writing challenge drabble for my RP group: "Write about the fears your character first experienced during the first battle of being a super hero. It can be about one thing that happened during battle where your character felt fear, or it can be about the anxiety and over-all fear of the first battle your character encountered as a super hero."
> 
> ...now that I'm reading it again, I'm noticing that I didn't address it correctly. Shoot.

He told himself it would be like getting x-rays at the dentist’s: take a seat, stare straight ahead, relax, don’t move. A few orbits of the mechanical arm dousing you with radiation, and bam! All done.

But these weren’t x-rays he was about to bathe in. He’d dedicated his entire scientific career to date to the far-flung reaches of the electromagnetic spectrum, where the width of the rays’ wavelengths was condensed to the width of an atom’s nucleus and the frequency exceeded 1020 Hertz - an electromagnetic ray that produced one of the brightest, fiercest, hottest phenomenon in the known universe, a phenomenon signaling the birth of a black hole. Scientists could agree, virtually unanimously, that gamma radiation was the most dangerous on the spectrum, and there was a long list of things most people would rather do than willingly (or even unwillingly) expose themselves to it.

To say he was nervous, then, would have been an understatement. Despite his tireless research, he wasn’t convinced the procedure had been properly tested before an attempt on a human subject was feasible. Unfortunately, the alternative to prematurely strapping himself to a suped-up dentist chair and taking a gamma bath had been losing his funding, and damn if the good General Thunderbolt would have Bruce by the balls with his damn checkbook. The compromise was simple: Bruce would test it on himself. Ross would get his human test, Bruce wouldn’t have to put an innocent intern in harm’s way, and if everything went well, Bruce would even be stronger, healthier, and happier for it. The gains, as far as Bruce could tell, far outweighed the losses. Yet, as the gamma rig began to hum and whir, Bruce still couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of blood in his ears. He could lie to everyone but himself: he was scared.

And so was she. As the rig raised him so he was seated upright, he could see her behind the Plexiglass window where she watched. And waited. The arm of the machine continued its arc, and just before it passed between himself and her, he flashed her a quick wink. Then the white arm of the machine replaced her face, followed by a green light -

He couldn’t tell if he was imagining the tingling just beneath his skin, but he decided it was the nerves and ignored it. He was past the point of no return, anyway: strapped in, dosed up, with Betty and her father both awaiting the success of their hard work and military funding (respectfully). Not to mention that Bruce’s career, his reputation, even his life depended on this working out. Every day since he’d been on his own he’d dedicated to proving himself a valuable human being. Most days that had involved getting out of bed and contributing to the economy by buying a coffee and a bagel at Starbucks, but this… If he felt he couldn’t afford to fail at anything before this, he knew he couldn’t now. Nor could he ignore the tingling any longer as it blossomed into a full-on burn…

Shit. Something was wrong. He had miscalculated, overshot - and he was cooking alive. He didn’t need to see his vital signs to know his heart rate was skyrocketing; he could feel it, his chest throbbing as though it were about to burst open, and he was halfway to opening his mouth to call the project off when a searing bolt of fire shot from between his eyes, down his spine to every fiber of every muscle, and Jesus Christ, this was it. He was dying, and it was taking an eternity. He couldn’t tell if he was screaming or thrashing or pissing himself - he couldn’t hear anything but the pounding, couldn’t feel anything but the electric burn - until it started to fade into…something else, but Bruce wasn’t sure he cared as long as the burning stopped, and as he slipped under the last conscious thought he could conjure was the fear that Betty would have to live with his greatest failure for the rest of her life while he got to run away.

The first one he had when he came to was that he’d killed her, and he would have to live with that for the rest of _his_ life. It didn’t take him long after that to learn that fear was going to be his only companion for quite some time, though the worst wasn’t that Ross would catch him or that he’d eventually die from gamma poisoning: it was that his father was right, that he had always been a monster.


End file.
